


To Hell Among the Rogues

by Bryn Lantry (Bryn)



Series: Ursus Major [2]
Category: Blake's 7
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1993-01-01
Updated: 1993-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-03 20:57:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/385859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bryn/pseuds/Bryn%20Lantry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With more extracts from 'Julius Caesar'. It's a close analogy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Hell Among the Rogues

**Author's Note:**

> printed in the zine 'Fire and Ice II', editor Kathleen Resch, 1993

###

“Cold morning light,” came a growl in his ear. “Time to face me.”

Waking under these circumstances was the nearest he came to bliss. Avon remembered learning that, four years ago. On Gauda Prime, the truth was even more true. He arched against flesh marked with tears, sweat, semen. Strange to think of the things gone through last night. Him and Blake, under this quilt.

“Was more fun facing away.” Content slurred Avon's words. “More fun than ever I had.”

“Mistaken there. Facing away on Liberator was that.”

To regret the past wasn't efficient. “Actually, your fucking matures like wine,” Avon told him.

“While my spirit goes mouldy, like cheese,” Blake answered into the nape of his neck. “I'm glad that doesn't signify.”

Avon had imagined that the night's confessions would cure the rebel. He had done his utmost. Was there more to do? “Well, you were always most riveting in bed when least happy.”

The hot mass that was Blake tipped him onto his back. “Yesterday, Cassius, you accused me of adultery.”

Reminded of Jenna, he gave the culprit a mean nip. “Deservedly.”

A less than repentant chuckle. “Have a care of the corollary.” And Blake swirled a thumb round his balls.

Years of separation had left Avon famished. “Hmmm?”

“We must be married.”

Damn logic, anyway. An old quandary churned in his brain. He bluffed, “Shut up and jerk me.”

When his skin was steaming, the fingers treacherously deserted their post.

Perversely enough, Avon's libido thrived on these games. He snarled picturesquely.

“Marry me and you can kick,” an ultimatum was rumbled.

Roj's playful moods were not his least alarming. The single eye glimmered down in dead serious humour, from a face swarthier in the dimness. Offence was safest. “No bonding office would license a convicted corruptor of innocents like you.”

“You weren't innocent, just a prude.”

“As a consolation prize, if you angle those subversive buttocks my way, Brutus, I will possess you.”

“You do possess me, Kerr. Like a devil. I was thinking of a pact, Mephistopheles, signed in blood. To do the thing traditionally.” Spit-wetting him, Blake hung one sinewy leg out of bed, and exposed his hole with his hands.

“Hell,” prayed Avon, and crammed himself in. What remained of his mind savoured the syllables _possession_. Balancing by a clutch of curls, he jampacked Roj, fast and fast. Until his gloating spilled over, crooning from him down to Roj. “Ah, your hole's mine, only for me. I'll have you enough you'll forget anyone else can. How you kick me,” he wondered like a child. “As if I never kicked until --”

Pyrrhic victory, thought Avon, as he reared high only to fall. Writhing helplessness just when he was branding the man as his. Each other's seed was a transforming agent, lingering in the companion body. Some people spat it out. He would never spit Roj's –

Blake caught the wreck of him with the complacent smile of a sibyl. “Corollaries, my Kerr. Territorialism works both ways.”

Avon had figured that out.

Married, were they, in his rebel's antiquated phraseology? Possibly that was as good a shorthand as any for his object in journeying here. Past the ruin of Liberator, the ruin of Anna, the ruin of his political plans. One object remained, which yesterday he had spoken. _Believe in blood and ruin, but believe in me_. Brutus' love, worth having even after defeat, and Cassius had ruthlessly wrestled the love again out of that earlier crusader-gone-wrong.

Like the revolt in the tragedy, Avon suspected that this minor episode of terroristic heroism was ended. On an emotional level, Blake himself was persuaded of the fact. And to Blake, unfortunately, defeat mattered. Yes, he had consented to have another go at this passion between them. But he hated himself.

“You're in the wrong quarters, Blake,” were Avon's next words. “Should either of us have an early intruder. If we scandalise your worshippers, the rebellion might crumble.”

“Prudent as ever.”

“One of us has to be. Your forgetfulness would have given away our racket before Cygnus Alpha.”

“Jenna wasn't fooled. Noticed the omens as early as the London, I found out.”

“I see. You told her.”

Blake paused on the edge of the bunk. “Figured it was time to own up.”

The technician smirked. “I expect she was less than delighted.” He had respected Jenna, even enjoyed her company, and grudges against the dead were no doubt ungracious. Yet...

Gathering his clothes, Blake slanted him a glance. “She thought you were bad for me.”

“Ought I be grateful to have survived as far as the Liberator?”

“Actually, my idiosyncratic predilection reprieved you from a fast exit out the hatch.”

Face souring, Avon watched as the rebel degenerated into a bounty hunter. Hulking, drab tunic, ample tools for the grievous harming of anyone who objected to him, and that smirch of stubble. As if he were blaspheming himself with ugliness.

“Meet me in the docking cradle,” ordered Blake, opening the door. Then he winked. “Morning off.”

He left Avon's sleeping quarters with no furtiveness whatsoever.

After washing away traces of the night, Avon stalked into medical. A rickety Del Tarrant returned his grimace of greeting, and challenged, “Dayna reports you've given him Orac.”

“I have lent him Orac. Which was originally his.”

“And have you lent him yourself, which was originally his?”

The boy considers it his role to be objectionable, Avon thought. “We did come to ally. Or are you surfeited with rebellions, Tarrant?”

Scorpio's pilot slumped into his palatial pillows. “Just with trust tests. Your Blake plays the bounty hunter too persuasively. Nearly got him killed.”

“Blake does most things too persuasively. When you decide to arise, you can question his strategy.”

Cheer lighted the bruised face. “And I won't forget to tell him he was last on your list of figureheads.”

He bared his teeth. “You do that, Tarrant. Roj Blake always needed humbling.”

“For a living legend, he's hard to figure. He's angry enough for several rebels, but I wonder about where it's directed. Things have happened to him – he told me that, and he wasn't playacting then. Are you sure your exploitable idealist is one anymore?”

Avon had stopped smiling. “Idealism extracts its price. Blake has merely arrived as his time to pay.” He nodded goodbye.

Blake will pull through, he promised himself fiercely as he walked.

In the gloom of the docking cradle, a ragtag herd of warships crouched. Avon located a technician, to ask, “Where's Blake?”

A greasy grin, and she yelled down a pipe, “The Grizzly out hunting?”

“Devil knows,” came a subterranean answer. “And Deva on a good day.”

Searching the labyrinth of the flotilla, his ear recognised Blake – sounding truculent. “This is GP, Deva, not the domes of Earth.”

Avon eavesdropped from behind the rusting vents of a planethopper, curious to hear how his supplanter handled the Grizzly.

“Was that a confession that his fidelity depends on unnatural affection?” asked an earnest Deva.

Avon curled his lip.

Blake was retorting, “He's faithful to me, which is all the information you need.”

“Roj, I'm not the enemy, remember? I need every piece of information pertaining to the Ursus Major project. You wouldn't hear any criticism of his record --”

“His record's a damn sight cleaner than mine.”

“On that one I won't tackle you. I can see his personal significance to you, Blake. If that's the situation, I won't go censorious on him.”

“The company you keep in a revolution,” satirised Blake. “Bounty hunters, perverts --”

“I wasn't asking from bigotry. Private wishes are a private misery, but when he engenders rumour, that's my job. Because you're my job. His imprudence yesterday --”

“Imprudence?” stormed Blake in high register. “He kissed my ruined eye. Most gag at the sight. Just possibly he gave me a soul again. If that harmed my public image, the image lies.”

“Your people, Blake, not your public,” Deva complained in his wake.

Three vessels on, Avon intercepted the scowling desperado whose eyes were once as warm as binary sun. “Good morning, Blake.”

“Good morning, Avon,” he grunted. “Follow me.”

“What's Ursus Major? A star configuration?”

That hindered Blake's stride. “Listening in?”

“A technique picked up from Vila. We will stage a disagreement for your computer inexpert, which will convince him I would rather seduce an Eridani warpwolf.” Avon would have acknowledged himself a fool to have caressed Blake in front of witnesses. Only he found that impossible to regret. “You might have fibbed with more heart, Blake.”

“Why should I? Or is every cardinal sin necessary for the good of the rebellion?”

“Most, I imagine, excluding adultery.”

Blake stopped again, and a belly laugh escaped him. A revival of that giant-proportioned mirth that had been his years ago. “See that frigate?” Blake gestured. “Pride of my navy. Bartered Terra Nostra names to an aristocratic anarchist for her.”

Going over, Avon assessed her subtle curves. “Nice,” he admitted. The name was in black gothic script: Blood Oath.

“Care to go for a spin?”

The technician was tempted.

As Blake worked at the gold-rimmed piloting panel, Avon sank into the deeps of a plum chair. Gargoyles, for stars' sake, squatted over the main screen, as if direct from a medieval church. “Baroque,” he remarked in amusement. “Nothing like the domes of Earth.”

“The anarchist was an eccentric too.”

“And filthy rich,” he grinned. “I hope there's jewelled cutlery.”

“Sold for guns. I left the less outrageous decadence for you.”

“For me?”

“Thought you liked the ship.” A whoosh of pressure, and olive sky was in the portholes.

Ridding himself of harness, Avon leaned on the pilot's console. “You fascinate me, Blake. Where's the catch?”

“Third on your left,” he answered promptly, pointing to an exit.

Eyebrow climbing, Avon investigated. Dumped on an enormous brass four-poster was a miscellany of clothes, in leather, silk, metal. Dyed – he'd given up colour, somewhere down his mental power-dive. He fingered kidskin jodhpurs of a sombre green. Enamelling everywhere, and rarely a sleeve.

Liberator revisited – only Blake was the agent here, and the exoticism of the gear rivalled his warlord summit.

He returned with a sample. “Dare I inquire?”

“Too risky to be Avon on this planet. Most of the bounty hunters are genuine.”

“You kept your name.” His uneasiness insisted on elaborating, “To rake through the muck of Gauda Prime.”

“So you could track me down. But I've gone undercover, and you must. I won't ask you to bounty hunt.” Blake's face was stone. “That's a job to wish on my worst enemy. A bit of piracy wouldn't go astray, though. If pillage appeals to your larcenous nature?”

“A terrorist, and next a pirate. You'll get me damned yet, Blake.”

“To keep me company in hell,” he agreed with a murky smile. “Unless you're leaving, Avon.” That baritone's Welsh undertow was caressing.

Did Blake fear he would?

“Not this morning.” To remind Blake of why that option was no option, he stripped with vindictive slowness. On Liberator, in the bad times, Avon had often cursed the man for being unrivalled in bed.

Blake, probably thinking similarly, wrenched the frigate through an unwarranted and scarcely governed zigzag.

“Cream or crimson silk?” asked Avon, cocking a pale hip in reflection.

“Crimson for a devil.”

Over the silk he hooked up a waist-short, tight jerkin of leather heavily fretted with bronze. Having mercy on the pilot, he added the soft jodhpurs with their metal-plate belt, darkly enamelled.

Blake admired the change. “That leather's just the shade of your eyes. Permits a bit of temperature to them, unlike your black.” He toed the discarded studs. “You look safe to hop into bed with.”

Avon spared him a sardonic glance. “You're the greatest argument I've encountered for keeping a whip under the pillow.”

“Yes, I suspected there was some such tendency underlying your waspishness.”

Avon regretted his black and silver. To compensate, he coiled a serpent, precious looking, about his naked bicep. “Not unwarm, then, but poisonous,” he grinned. Surveying weaponry and power bank data, he snarled a laugh. “Mine?”

“Yours, my acquisitive Kerr.”

But when had Blake arranged this? Another offer too good to refuse, leaving Avon no choice, and no time to think. Blake had enlisted Avon's senses against him the first night-half on Liberator. The technician snapped, “And what have you acquired from the transaction?”

“Work,” the other barked.

 _Marry me_ , Roj had ordered. “And your hooks in me?”

That jangled on Blake's rawest nerve. “Not to mention the means to escape me. This ship's fast.”

Eyes scraped one another like stag horns tangled in combat. Each, inevitably, had Star One in mind. The rebel's moribund socket gleamed.

Avon's declaration of independence didn't last. Irony sabotaged it. “Not fast enough.” He contemplated the mouth that had swallowed more of his substance than any other. “Blood Oath,” he repeated. “Why not? A tide of the blood swept us into each other's clutches.”

“I hoped more than blood.”

Crossing his piratically bare arms, Avon mused, “My mystic. Is there much more than blood?”

“An ancient symbol for death and for lust.” The rebel was chafing his scar as if he thumb might erase it. “Remember Star One? Wade in blood, was your malediction, to your armpits. Death and lust. Lust to forget the death. We wallowed in blood and never thought much, in those times.”

Avon frowned at his rambling, and had nothing to answer. “Roj?” he asked.

Blake's squinting eye slitted right down. “There's coffee in the galley.”

In geostationary orbit, they lunched on yamas in a spicy sauce, camembert and melons. “A contrast to guerrilla fare on your base,” said Avon.

“Glad to see you gluttonising. You're skinnier.”

“You remain plump, notably in the right places.”

Blake, moody, forgot his fork. “You enjoyed the Shakespeare, I gather?”

“I was entertained.”

“Entertain me with a critique of honourable Brutus.”

“The purger, not the murderer?” Avon smiled fondly. “His major error was not executing enough of the rival party.”

“Cassius argued for killing Antony along with Caesar.”

“Exactly. Shall I number the times you spared Travis or Servalan?”

“Not necessary. You'll discover I've counteracted my misguided idealism.” Blake delivered this like the epitaph of an enemy.

“Good.” But Avon's tone came out equivocal. They traded a slow gaze, until Avon resumed, “The ignoble drives of Cassius, had he not been under Brutus' spell, might have overthrown the tyranny. If there ever was a tyranny, which remains moot.”

“Yet Cassius was too quick to despair. That's how he died. Short sight.”

“A pessimist, then.”

“A defeatist.” Blake looked knowing, even accusing.

You've lost hope yourself, good Brutus, thought Avon. “So where does that leave our conspirators? Doomed together and doomed apart?” He licked melon juice from Roj's thumb.

“Portia swallowed fire,” Blake reminded him abruptly.

Brutus' _wife_. Suicide before surrender. A whole squadron of gunships. “Was that why he was obstreperous when Cassius returned?”

From the sub-beam a message crackled. “Bounty hunter.”

Blake jumped on the receive. “Here, Deva. Work for me?”

“No, just the Federation observers arriving. Escorted in by three gunships, ionosphere sector eighteen.”

“Past time, too. We're in nineteen ourselves. I think I'll see to these fellows personally. Hisseme in flight?”

“Hisseme's dogging them, bloodthirsty as ever. You needn't involve yourself, Roj.”

“Better an assassin than a hypocrite,” was Blake's grim answer. He flipped the switch before Deva could debate his reasoning. “Bit of action, Avon. Prime the plasma cannon.”

“What's the Federation observing?” asked Avon as the ship heaved into battle run. “How many undesirables have been swept under the mat?”

“Yes, and whether the penal code can be reinstated yet.”

“What are your plans for them?”

“A simple plan, Avon.”

A ramshackle dreadnought chased a cluster of gunships across his sights. Avon remembered those green- and red-striped parasites. He hammered his aft neutrons, and punctured one. The gunship plummeted, spitting balls of smoke. Revenge for Scorpio.

“Enjoying yourself?” Blake inquired, noticing his smile.

“Knowledge of whom you require me to obliterate might be an advantage.”

“That dreadnought from a wrecker's yard if a friend of mine. Everyone else is fair game.”

Unfortunately, the other escorts fell foul of Hisseme. “You have lethal friends,” Avon acknowledged, as the unwieldy battleship spun and bit the last of the gunners like an adder.

“That's why I pay them. Wages of sin.”

“Do you intend to belatedly pay me wages?”

“Thought I had.”

“This morning, or last night?”

“Ah, Kerr, last night's were mine.”

Blood Oath trailed the dreadnought, which was bullying Gauda Prime's guest planetwards. The pursuit ended in a fen, marshy under the three craft.

The engines quietened. Avon's hand was reluctant to leave the plasma cannon. “Why don't I burn them where they sit?” he proposed, callous about the fate of anyone Federation.

Blake was staring out the main screen, to the mud-spattered insignia of the High Council ship. No, not there, Avon realised, but at the gargoyles perched above the screen. Horns like demons. One had a tongue poked out, leering. The other pondered, chin on his fists.

“You must touch the life you take.” Blake spoke softly. “Sinofar told me that.” Rising, he hefted his blaster. “Game to come?”

Game? When was Avon less than game?

Evil-smelling reeds tangled in the wind. From the dreadnought trooped a rowdy group, clad in coloured metal and velvet, not unlike Avon's new garb. The humans among them had shaggy, knotted hair.

“Good flying, Hisseme,” Blake told a slightly feline alien. Her ruffled pelt was fawn, and she was waving about a huge, triple-barrelled laser.

“Any time, General.” Green eyes, a perfect almost shape, peered curiously at Avon.

“This is Hisseme the Cat,” Blake introduced her. Then, to Hisseme, “He's a friend of mine, in from Tajeel.”

Avon remembered he was anonymous. Pirates abandoned their surnames. Rootless. Lost souls. “Kerr,” he offered. But the tradition was to pick a title. Like Bayban the Butcher, of Vila's acquaintance. Kerr the Killer, he thought, picturing Anna, and the near replay in Blake's tracking gallery. But Roj wouldn't appreciate that. “The Dark,” sprang to mind.

Blake grinned in his direction.

The name Kerr, in fact, meant dark.

“We're keeping our visitors in suspense,” said Blake, and the grin was extinguished.

The Cat and her barbaric crew stormed a hatch of the silent vessel. No resistance was met. A civilian transport, luxurious but defenceless, she had trusted to the Gaudan courtesy escort. In this era of Pylene 50, anarchy was thought a spectre of the past. Servalan would have been less complacent, but she was an obscure commissioner.

The cockpit was deserted. Avon snapped off the mechanical wailing of the distress beacon. On her stealthy hind-paws, Hisseme ranged the ship, her comrades' bristle of guns poking into every cavity. Blake was patient in the rear, and Avon glued himself to him. Wherever Blake had got his cheek slashed, plainly he'd been in need of Avon's vigilance. The rebel _was_ more spacewise; Tarrant had related the tale of how he demolished a ship with only a hand-blaster and cunning from within the hulk of Scorpio. But here, he had the foolhardiness to be obviously miles away.

In a stateroom with tiled bath and satin hangings, the pirates ran their quarry to ground. A brace of politicians, and a vampire in pilot's uniform. None of the three were armed.

Anarchy rises from the grave, thought Avon, seeing the disbelief of these civilized specimens.

“Tie up the mutoid,” Blake directed brusquely. The gang jumped to his command.

Hisseme wrinkled her neat, chocolate nose at the Feds. “Will I see to them, boss?”

“No, Hisseme. I can carry on from here. You space before the police answer that distress.”

“Aye aye. Want to save on the kill fee?”

Blake didn't find this humorous, but gave a tight smile. The Cat tramped out, hooting for her followers.

Left in the company of only a pair of ruffians, one of the politicians found his tongue. Panic jumbled his speech. “Who are you? We haven't any money. Here's my rings.”

A horror-sweat wet his thinning hair. Blake looked damn near as sick.

“There's credits in the safe. What do you mean to do? I'm a Senator! I'm chief of the Information Bureau!”

Hardly the information to placate Blake with, noted Avon. He recognised the fat face, an icon of power even when Avon was an Earth citizen. The name, he didn't remember. Avon settled his weight on his heels and smiled politely as if listening, caressing his projectile rifle.

“You won't use that? No need for that. The president will ransom us. You'll see. A million. Ask him for a million. President Joban won't let you get away with any shifty --”

Busy with Avon, the rotund coward had forgotten Blake. Not so his stiff fellow. That one's slate eyes tracked the rebel as he wandered to the rear of the Senator, apparently curious about the knickknacks on the dresser.

Then a blast whined.

It was a tidy business, and the Information Chief never knew it happened. One moment jabbering, the next – non-existent.

Avon hadn't seen Blake slaughter anyone who wasn't fighting. Certainly he _had_ , from a distance, like that raid on Space Command.

But face to –

Face to _back_. An Avonesque position. Well, Blake had assessed his victim's fear and chosen that. Sometimes giving no notice was a kindness.

“Bercol,” said the remaining one. Then his fish-cold stare rose to the executioner. “My turn. I can take my shot straight. If you have the honesty.”

Blake stepped around the corpse, studying this slight, grey-skinned man. “High Councillor Rontane.”

“Blake,” he identified in return. “The terrorist. We have you down as deceased.”

“So much for the Information Bureau.”

Rontane gestured ironically to his dead colleague. “Quite. You were nearly the death of Bercol and I once before, Blake.”

“I don't recall.”

“I daresay not. The massacre at the trial of Travis. We were in attendance, but Bercol was overcome with nausea. I assisted him out. Bercol had a poor digestion; he blamed Servalan's cuisine. I think it was nerves.”

Stop _talking_ so he can put you in hell, Avon willed. Obediently, the urbane voice subsided.

Blake ripped a length of cord from the bed curtains, tossing the stuff to Avon. “Secure his hands.”

Avon's eyes narrowed. “I gather the plan was otherwise.”

“The plan just changed. Do it.”

 _Do it_. Avon ought to lift his rifle and do it. Since _you_ can't stand to, Blake. “A trifle late for mercy,” he observed.

Blake growled from his throat, “Mercy? The High Councillor can help me. I gave you an order.”

Fine. Let Deva organise his elimination, somewhere out of good Brutus' sight. Avon trussed this rodent of an official, hard.

“You won't object if I spare the pilot,” Blake jeered, and trudged out to the howling fen.

On the Blood Oath, Avon shoved Rontane into a cabin. The man risked a smirk, and only just survived.

Deva's problem, Avon told himself. Blake, on the other hand, is no longer his but mine. Deva has permitted his misery to mess him up. _I want to die_ , Blake had told him, matter-of-fact, the afternoon Avon had arrived.

Journeying to base, Blake, as much as the clouded sky, cancelled out the ship's lighting. Until Avon remarked, “An expedient evil, Roj. I surmise Gauda Prime will remain an open planet.”

Belligerent, Blake demanded, “I shot at least one of them, didn't I?”

“Indeed you did, I witnessed you.”

“Then what's your problem?”

“No problem, Blake.”

The red frigate glided on. “Kerr the Dark,” Blake said, with a glimmer of good nature. “Kerr was a word for dark, you mentioned once. I believe you were threatening me at the time.”

“I was named in prophecy of my dark streak.”

“Blake means black.”

“Truly? Destined for each other, then.”

“A black sheep in the fold, I was.”

“And _you_ have a black streak.”

Blake surveyed him. “That right?”

Therapy was tricky work, gambling work. And Avon's tactics were rough in any situation. “Remember the Ortega? You rigged a charge for a ship of crims. When you told us, you had an unholy smile. You were devilishly pleased with yourself.”

“And we had no information on who was aboard.”

“One has to face black streaks, I suppose. Handle them. But as for your Sinofar – I doubt she intended you to become a moral masochist.”

Blake looked down. “I found a poem, about despair, among Deva's books. He's a bit of a bibliophile. Reflective chap, not a natural fighter.”

“Tell me.”

“I learnt some lines.” Blake frowned, repeated them slowly. “The mind, mind has mountains, cliffs of fall, frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap may he who never hung there.”

“I have hung there, Roj.”

“You'll have to forgive my state.”

Avon walked over to his console, and stood for the remainder of the flight with his hands on Blake's shoulders.

Blood Oath docked. Leaving Rontane to cool his heels, they headed for Deva's office. Farewells drifted to them from his ajar door. Blake confiscated Avon's gun with a quick snatch, just before a stranger in grey uniform exited.

“Bounty hunter,” the uniform drawled.

“Sir,” Blake snapped.

“Another catch?” A lazy eye inspected Avon. “Did we license you for him?”

“Didn't hunt him, sir. Detained him for questioning, pursuant to my duties as law enforcement officer, temporary, sir.”

“Bounty hunter, think of your controller's paperwork and endeavour to keep this one alive.”

Blake did a melodramatic rendition of a cutthroat. “Last crimo had a death wish, sir.”

When the official's footsteps faded, Avon plucked back his weapon. “Law enforcement officer?” he inquired. “This world _is_ topsy-turvy.”

“That undiscriminating computer promoted me last week,” grinned Blake.

“Whose computer?”

“The vigilantes. Proto-police. Think they run they planet.”

“Little do they know.”

Blake entered and sat upon his controller's paperwork. “What was sir sniffing after?”

Deva pulled a harried face. “Going the rounds of Tracking and Analysis Stations, he claimed. Just checking. I'm concerned.”

“Any more concerned and my next gunrunner will import a therapist.”

As Blake reported, Avon was tempted to initiate Deva into the cabala of unnatural affection. Severely, he restrained his fingers from Roj's knee.

Blake wound up with, “Oh, and there's a prisoner on Avon's ship.”

“Prisoner? Your rule was no prisoners.”

“Name of Rontane. For the time being, I'm keeping him.”

“Rontane,” nodded Deva. “It has the logic of nightmare. And next inspection, how do we justify holding the Minister for Civil Structuring in our cells? Possession of an unregistered firearm?”

Blake shrugged. “Stick him in the underground, where my army hides. Rontane was Servalan's major opponent.” He chewed his lip. “I'd like to get to know him. See to it, Deva.”

Resigned, he said, “I trust the time being is of short duration, Blake.”

Avon lifted an eyebrow. Well, Roj made short work of Deva.

Next this interloper turned to him, manner formal. “I see we have another pirate on the staff.”

“I rather fear Blake had recruited me with his customary ruthlessness. Might I mention that my underutilized speciality is embezzling?”

“He's a good embezzler,” seconded Blake. “He embezzled my principles.”

Deva harumphed. “Where do we post Avon, then? Off planet, or in the east?”

Blake's burly frame hunched. “Right here.”

“Out of the question. Bounty hunters and pirates are supposed to be eternal opposites.”

He detonated, flinging weighty hands stained from the forest. “You were never keen on Avon joining the party, Deva. Do you imagine I waited a year for him merely to run blockades? Avon's cursed good for me – the only one whose opinion I think of ranking over mine. I need his bastard's wisdom.”

This tirade unravelled Deva's auburn forelock, but he clung onto his humour. “The bottom truth is, Roj, I'm glad to make the acquaintance of a human being you trust.”

Blake regained human status. “Here he is, then.”

“In which case, I wish you'd look after your wise bastard. He appears done in to me.”

Blake twisted round to me, and laughed. “Now you mention it. Early yet, Kerr.”

He had never called him Kerr in front of anyone.

“Nocturnal research of _Julius Caesar_ ,” Avon excused his sleep-hungry eyes. “Then nocturnal research of Brutus.” And before, dream-ridden dozes on Xenon.

They left the bibliophile Deva to decipher the puzzle.

“I never noticed you ranking my opinion over yours,” Avon commented.

“I said I think about it.”

Stopping only to grab sandwiches from the kitchen, they retreated to Blake's quarters. These were remote, and strewn inches deep with books, trousers, music and empty ale bottles. Morbidly, Avon observed a painting of the moon eclipsing Earth. “I suppose your smuggler lady shared this.”

“Jenna was impatient of mess.”

“How did she tolerate your curls?”

“Or my heart,” he grunted, wolfing down the last of his sandwich. “I'm ragged around the edges myself.”

“Overwork. Come to bed.”

There was a photograph of Avon – from the Criminal Register, and staring less than romantically – pinned near the pillow. Each pretended to ignore it as they tumbled under the quilt and ejected pieces of clothing.

“Well, my captain of the Blood Oath.” Blake thumped off the light. “What dastardly illegalities will we perpetrate this evening?”

“I've no energy for the poking of anything anywhere.”

“When I protested similarly, you scoundrel, you threatened to abandon ship.”

He twined in amorous nostalgia. “The blackmail worked marvels.”

Blake cuffed him. Avon kicked in retaliation, and pulled a ringlet to tame his rebel. “Brutus, do behave. I never learned what a disruptive sleeping companion you make.”

“No, my precious rascal. You used to bully your cheap thrills from me and leave.”

“Thrills with you are invariably expensive.” Roving over his flanks, which were generous and limber, like a lion's, Avon remembered the malicious glee of giving Roj more pleasure than he could handle. A smoky promise into the other's ear – “I'll kiss your hole.”

“You were three weeks over asking me that on Liberator.”

“You provoke thoughts which never before sullied my mind.” And Avon countered, not modestly, “Wasn't that the time you informed me I was the most splendid thing to come to any bed of yours?”

“Well, you believed yourself wicked, and that charmed me.” The regional lilt was undermining Blake's educated pronunciation. “Short, dark and handsome. Kiss me.”

“Everywhere,” Avon agreed, guttural, slow. He savoured the mouth awhile. Then his gaze pierced the gloom to capture Blake's. More tenderly than he could manage on another subject, he bade, “Roll over for me, Roj.”

He rasped, delicate and relentless, Blake twitching under his art. The quilt, and Blake, toasted him nicely. Everything but his tongue asleep, he listened to Blake's breath, which was heavy and changing like a fugue, and plotted wild augmentations, for when next he found himself awake.

One eon or another, Blake hauled him from his tranquil nook. Avon sprawled over a torso resembling an armchair, without enquiry whether he were heavy. As he drifted, he sensed a pensiveness in the other which might be mistaken for gravitational shift. Under the circumstances, Blake escaped being plagued about what he was brooding furiously upon.

Hours later, Blake yelled in dream, “Raiker, damn you, those men are unarmed!”

Jerked from sleep, Avon heard.

Blake shoved him away.

Fumbling for half-lights, Avon found his friend slithered to the floor. “I can't go on,” Blake choked.

“ _Tomorrow_ ,” urged Avon quickly. “Think tomorrow.” He threaded patient fingers through a few curls.

“There can be no justification for deliberate murder. I told my lawyer that on Earth. What a joke.”

“Roj, you fool. This is no answer. Not for you. I'm your cynic, your psychopath, possibly. I suppose you missed me,” he grinned. “But you can't become me. Won't work to throw out wholesale that irrational conscience I mocked.”

“Even Deva goes along with the no prisoners policy. Administratively neat. He's not given a gun and told to do the messy bits.”

“Bercol was an insect, Blake.”

“Not even Tando was an insect. Just a human gone rotten in the soul. And haven't I?” The words came out wet.

“Roj, stop this. I'm here. I can help.” But he was bewildered as to how.

“Just don't hate me, Avon, like you did for Star One,” he rasped. “Though I've no right to ask.”

“I have no ability to hate you. I would be more just to hate me.” And he had hated himself, since he was young, but worse after he had driven Blake from Liberator and no-one remained to forgive him.

“I've needed you, Kerr.”

Any answer was strangled in Avon's throat. Star One? Blake's faith in him then had absolved him for everything he was. And yesterday had revealed that Blake thought him fit to be loved, too.

Was it feasible, then, in Blake's words, to hope for more?

“Sorry.” Blake rallied, and dismissed the scene briefly. “Nightmare.” He clambered into bed.

Troubled, Avon lay flat, three inches between them.

“I like you staying the off-watch,” Blake ventured.

“I am content to. I did occasionally, if you recall, by accident.”

An arm petitioned Avon to come nearer. But Blake spoke clinically. “When first I penetrated you, I decided from the reaction that you came to me for that kind of thing, which was difficult to find on Earth.”

“Obviously, I do come to you for that. And you do have a giant, succulent cock --” He bared his teeth.

“Bet you wouldn't bother with me were it an inch shorter.”

“One might think you resented my lust for you, Blake.” They had worked around to... buggery, after Centero. For a time, simply investigating the workings of Blake's nether anatomy, clutched to his, had been plenty to engross him.

The rebel shifted restlessly. “Yet, in sensuality, you can be so – caring. I never figured out how to interpret that mood.”

Avon was willing to attempt an explanation. “I protected your body from the troopers. As a logical extension, I had no trouble treating your body similarly in bed.”

“Kerr. The word we spoke last night.”

Avon waited, eyes huge and blind.

“Love,” specified Blake. “I avoided that word on Liberator.”

“Do you find the concept relevant to two mangled outlaws who, admittedly, can't keep their hands off one another?”

“Maybe mangled outlaws have more need.”

“In short, you wish to discover whether I am in love,” stated Avon, since Blake was too civil.

A pause. “Not if you can't tell, Cassius,” was the wistful answer.

Avon _was_ ignorant. But he doubted love worked for the undeserving. “I suspect I've harboured every emotion in the book for you, one stage or another. I don't evade you from reticence, but turmoil.”

“Never mind, then.” He didn't go reserved, but nuzzled warm and soft in Avon's crown.

“I refuse to do _without_ you, Blake.”

“I've stopped fishing.”

Avon stared into darkness, in the guilty knowledge that the deep chest thumping under his cheek was the world to him.

He frustrated himself.

Marry me, Roj had jested. Imagine that!

###


End file.
